Thom Browne

Rosy-cheeked and eternally boyish in his shrunken suits, Thom Browne
makes an unlikely fashion insurrectionist. But with the entire world gone
jeans-'n'-T-shirt casual, he believes formality is the truly radical way
to dress. So he imagined his precisely tailored clothes worn by radical
guysskiers, skaters, snowboarders. "It was important to get the clothes in
motion," he said as he watched his boys spin through fake snow on a
mini-rink to the unlikely strains of Rachmaninoff.

It turned out to be the perfect way to highlight the extreme sports
detailing (the inset quilting, the elbow and knee patches, the padded
calves). Browne hasn't changed his extraordinary signature proportionsthe cropped jacket, the shorts, and the little coat with the high half-belt that evoke old pictures of Prince Charles off to boarding school. But for fall he added much longer coats, because after all, legs can get cold in those cutoffs. He also covered bare flesh with long johns, though he
was equally taken by socks and garters, which, as he so rightly observed,
isn't a look you see on many young men these days.

Browne's more conventional winter wear included his version of the Puffa
vest, in corduroy or cashmere, and a fur jacket with a sportily striped
revers. One of his mannequins imperiously sported a beaver stole over
his gray cashmere-flannel shorts suit. "Like Russian nobility," Browne
mused, though such aristocratic connotations were hardly the focus of this
energetic show.